The Golden Sponge Cake with a Creamy Filling 

The iconographic Twinkie, as many goods ideas are, was a fortunate combination of events.   In 1930, Jimmy Dewar-- the manager of a bakery near Chicago-- was asked by Continental Foods (the makers of the Hostess Snack Food line) to develop a use for the shortcake equipment that lay idle when strawberries were out of season.  Dewar devised the idea of little snack cakes with a banana filling, which Continental then sold for five cents per two in a package (as times were tight.)  The name came from a billboard for ‘Twinkle Toe Shoes.’   Then during WWII, a shortage of bananas caused Hostess to replace the banana filling with a vanilla filling not unlike frosting.  The new combination became so popular that they never switched it back, and the legend was born.

Who can really pinpoint the appeal of the Twinkie? Is it the gooey center? The light, spongy cake?  Is it that we associate the Twinkie with rosy and nostalgic images of our childhoods, licking yellow crumbs off our fingers?   For many schoolchildren, the Twinkie reigned supreme on the playground and in the cafeteria– the highest valued bargaining chip in the lunch trading game.  Perhaps it’s because it seemed like you just had more treat: you could eat one, but you still had one.  That didn’t stop you from slowly sucking out the filling and then devouring the golden cake.

No matter how you ate yours, the Twinkie has made the leap from a snack cake to an American Icon. It’s the snack we love to make fun of while consuming $47 million worth a year.  Besides the guilt you feel when eating it-- as if you aren’t sure its really food at all-- Twinkies have been involved in everything from accusations of political bribery (Twinkie-gate) to legal defense (the Twinkie Defense) to being the subject of many science projects and websites dedicated to showing the effects of blowing up/burning/boiling and other methods of mauling the little treat.  It gets the presidential endorsement too;  in 1999 President Clinton put a package of Twinkies in the Millenium Time capsule as “An Enduring American Icon.”  A cake totally devoid of nutrients is so important to us that we’d put it in a time capsule?  It's a wonder what they’ll think about us in the future.

Despite your personal opinions on the confection – tasty, icky, good snack or chemical-laden abomination, one of the most fascinating debates about the Twinkie is that of its longevity.  According to Hostess, the shelf life of the snack is 25 days, which is significantly less than the oft-mentioned 50-100 year fallacies.  For a baked good, 25 days is actually quite long, and this is because the cake has no dairy products in its list of ingredients.  And although people in the 1950s did stock up on them for their fallout shelters, it is unlikely that one would survive a nuclear attack.  On the other side of the debate is evidence that a 30 year old snack cake kept by science teacher for an experiment is still edible…..you can draw your own conclusions, but we suggest that even if it's technically edible, just what is it going to do you if you eat it?

Currently, and in spite of the Lo-carb craze which in 2004 may have helped cause Continental foods to file Chapter 11, the Twinkie is enjoying a comeback as a deep fried confection – rolled in batter, deep fried to gooey yet crispy goodness and served with chocolate or berry sauce.  Perhaps this might give you visions of clogged arteries, but we've heard that anything--even the simple yumminess of a twinkie-- is even better deep-fried.